Nothing is Quite as it Seems. Arik Levy's Connection to Nature

"We are Nature--long have we been absent, but now we return;

We become plants, leaves, foliage, roots, barks;

We are bedded in the ground-- we are rocks(...)"

Walt Whitman

We Too--How Long We were Fooled*

Leaves of Grass 

1, 2 , 3, 4, 6  Photographies © Ian Scigliuzzi

5 Bookstool for Eno, 2007

Arik Levy's work reminds us that nature is always triumphant at last, whatever its degree of absence in our lives and in art. He derives complex compositions from a basic biomorphic unit which reproduce a cosmos in itself. With his myriad computered rock sculptures he creates a new genetic life with its own codes, relentlessly growing, proliferating, moving. Using a large spectrum of materials, reflective for most of them, he shows us a multi-faceted world where "nothing is ever as it seems", where a new invented gravity force is at play. Displacement, reconstruction and absence seem to be the main laws of his interaction with the landscapes and surroundings. "Very quickly I understood that these pieces are about what is missing, what I have taken off, Absence." Bridging the worlds of design and art he engages in every field that requires heart and brains; paintings, photography, stage installations for contemporary dance; his activity like his creation is versatile. His invented organic world seems to be proliferating from its own will as if eluding its creator.

Le Passage de Retz est un lieu singulier, exigeant, lumineux. Ni galerie d'art, ni musée, sa fondatrice Jacqueline Frydman le construit comme un passage de mise en relation entre création et industrie pour favoriser le développement des métiers, des savoir-faire, de la recherche et des transferts de technologie. Apparences trompeuses retrace le parcours d'Arik levy depuis ses débuts de plasticien jusque Out there, son travail de Land art aux sculptures monumentales, engagé depuis quatre ans. Le passage de Retz lui a consacré deux expositions, Light Light, Arik Levy un futur à rencontrer en 1998 et Du bois dont on se chauffe Pascal Colrat - Arik Levy en 2005-2006. 

*Quoted by Charlotte N. Eyerman

Arik Levy Apparences trompeuses

Passage de Retz

21 novembre 2012 - 13 janvier 2013

9 rue Charlot

75 003 Paris